Railbird Roundtable

In this new Card Player column, Bryan Devonshire and a cast of well-known pros provide their opinions on many different hands - everything from no-limit hold'em to badugi - that were played recently in the high-stakes poker world.

This hand provides an example of playing a big pair out of position in a difficult spot. When this situation presents itself, it's important to use deductive logic to assign our opponent a range of hands. This hand took place early (second level with the blinds at 20-40) in a nightly Full Tilt Poker $65,000-guaranteed, $150 multitable tournament.

The Hand

The villain in this hand is UTG (under the gun), has 3,500 behind, and open-limps with the blinds at 20-40. The player in the hijack seat (two to the right of the button) limps, and in the small blind, I find red aces with almost 5,000 behind. I raise to 201, a little on the small side. Generally, when making preflop raises, I raise 2.5-3 times the big blind, plus one big blind for each limper, plus one big blind to compensate for being out of position. The villain calls the additional 161, and the other limper folds.

Flop (pot: 482): Q 10 10; I bet 223, the villain calls.

Turn (pot: 928): 8; I bet 420, the villain calls.

River (pot: 1,768): J; I check, the villain bets 1,640.

All right, let's analyze the hand before we get to the river decision, focusing on what the villain has.

Preflop

First off, I know nothing about this player. I have zero reads, so in this spot, when a player limps early and then calls a raise, it often means a small pair. However, when the raise comes from the blinds and the early limper has position post-flop, the range widens considerably.

Flop

The flop is pretty favorable for us. There's no chance of him having flopped a small set, and if we meet considerable resistance, we can get away from this hand pretty easily. We are also a strong favorite against any hand without a 10, and can expect to get value from any queen; 10-10 or Q-Q is unlikely, since there was no preflop raise. I want to keep the pot small so that I lose less when I am behind, I have more room to maneuver on the expensive streets, and my hand looks weaker, making it more likely for me to get value from a bluff or a worse hand. I bet less than half the pot on the flop, and get called.

After each new piece of information, we should narrow our opponent's range. Before the flop, we had him on 2-2 to J-J (with the bigger pairs becoming more and more unlikely due to the limp-call preflop), and then any of the OK hands with which people often limp early instead of raise. These include all suited connectors J-10 to A-10, K-J, Q-J, and K-Q, basically. Obviously, you're going to be surprised sometimes, but these are reasonable enough ranges because it's what players usually have in these situations.

Turn

After the flop call, we can narrow him down pretty easily to A-Q, K-Q, Q-J, Q-10, A-10, K-10, J-10, J-9, K-J, or some weird float with anything in his range that missed the flop. So, going to the turn, we want to get more value from the Q-X hands and lose the minimum to the 10-X hands. I expect that we'll be raised by any hand that beats us on the turn, and we can safely fold. We bet less than half the pot again, and the villain calls again.

Now, I am pretty happy with my hand. With the board getting this scary, I believe that the villain would have raised with any hand that is beating us on either the flop or the turn. Since we haven't been popped yet, we can safely assume that we have the best hand, and can narrow his most likely range to A-Q, K-Q, Q-J, or K-J.

River

The river is a bad card for our hand, obviously. It would have been much easier to get value from a Q-X type of hand with a total brick. However, when we think about what the villain could possibly have that beats us now, with the way the hand has played out, none of those hands make sense. We still beat A-Q, K-Q, and Q-J. We lose to Q-9 now, but does Q-9 get to this river? Maybe, but unlikely. If he slow-played a big hand this far, that's fine, because we could have lost a lot more along the way to a better hand.

There's no reason to bet this river, even though we think we're ahead of his range; maybe in a cash game, but not in a tournament with shorter stacks. This is a much better spot to check, keeping the pot from getting out of hand, inducing bluffs, and giving us one more chance to gather information from our villain.

Our opponent bets 1,600 into a 1,700 pot on the river, a really big bet of more than half of his remaining stack size, and it feels super bluffy. Based on how we arrived on the turn, nothing really makes sense for him to have that's beating us, and this bet size feels weak. Usually in tournaments, big bets equal big hands, but in this spot, it feels like the guy with the really fast car who's trying to compensate for something. Something is obviously fishy with this bet, and now we have to decide if he's trying to get value from a big hand or is turning his top-pair hand into a bluff. Since the board was so scary, I deduced that it was likely enough that he was turning a made hand into a bluff. I called, and beat his K-Q offsuit.

I generally like to raise a little more preflop, usually to around 240 in this spot. I also tend not to type in my bet amount, like 201, fearing that I might induce my random opponents to fold. I also tend to bet more on this flop, as he has either a small pair and might call, a draw and will call for sure, a queen or a 10 and will call for sure, or nothing and will fold for sure, unless he decides to go crazy. Either way, we most likely will be looking to get to showdown here. In basically all of the hands I play, I try to make my decisions as easy as possible. On the turn, I would check-call basically 100 percent of the time, to hopefully induce a bluff when I am ahead and to save money when I am behind. While I will sometimes let a draw get there by giving a free card, I think letting him value-bet a worse hand or bluff in this spot is well worth it. It also puts us in a rough spot if we bet the turn and he raises, as we will now have to put our whole stack in on the river when we are most likely behind, but could easily be ahead. If he checks behind on the turn, I would value-bet basically all rivers. If we check-call the turn, I would most likely check-call every river, as we have A-A, and that beats a lot. It's as simple as that. As played, I think you have to check-call the river.
- Jonathan Little

I believe that the best way to control the pot size if that is what you are looking to do on the river is to bet.
I think that his hand is either K-Q, 10-8 suited, 10-9 suited, J-10 suited, Q-J suited, K-10 suited, A-10 suited, A-Q, K-K (both less likely), J-J, or 9-9 (far less likely). I believe he could have been flat-calling all of these holdings the whole way, partially to trap and partially for pot control. I don't think that you can go wrong betting this river for about half of the pot, because almost none of the holdings you beat are going to fold, and only hands that are slaughtering you will raise. You might get many hands that beat you to just call, which is a great result, as you have determined what you are going to lose in those variations.
- Eric "Sheets" Haber

There are way more hands in his range that we beat that he turns into a bluff, knowing how dangerous the board just got, than there are hands that beat A-A. The board pair is obviously important, because if he had Q-J or a straight, he would likely bet less to get value out of A-Q/K-Q types of hands. It's pretty clear that he's trying to make A-A/K-K fold. He's likely figured by now, since he's called two post-flop bets, that if you were bluffing, you'd still be bluffing this river card. Therefore, it's so unlikely that he has anything other than Q-10 or a complete bluff (as K-Q is 100 percent a bluff on this board) that it's pretty much a standard call based just on the bet size on the river. If he really had Q-10, J-10, or something else better than A-A, he'd likely milk value here. I definitely think we can safely assume that unless the villain is super sick, he's bluffing too high a percentage of the time with this bet size and value-betting way too little (if at all) here. Most players with Q-10 who reached this river are going to toss out like a half-pot bet at best.
- Jon "Sketchy1" Eaton

It's interesting how diverse the three opinions we received are. And that's what is ultimately going to make this column a bunch of fun. I give you a bit of the hand analysis, but what I'm really trying to do is challenge you in thoughts, not in situations, so that you become better critical thinkers. Poker is dynamic, not static, and the best players are constantly altering their play specifically to the situation they're in.
Peace, and good luck.